It was a joke Barbara.

Submitted by Abdul Rahman Reijerink (Australia), Jun 23, 2006 at 07:01

Despite that, the truth is the IRA has connections with retail terrorist outfits all around the world, where they share their know how and build networks, just like the US govt has connections with whole sale terrorists all around the world (like Turkey, Colombia, etc). Ask the poor coffee farming peasants in Columbia's north who they are more afraid of, Uncle Sam or Usama bin Laden. They are having their crops destroyed and being driven off their land in droves with your tax dollars by the druglords who control their state, all under the pretext of fighting the war on drugs.

This rhetoric of "war " (on terror , on drugs you name it) is a bit of a propaganda tool. you cannot fight a war with stateless bandits, what that is more properly called is policing. Which is the emphasis should be.

I ramble a bit. I am all for cracking down on criminality, but I don't always trust the state and its officers to get it right. here in my country (Australia) we had a famous case where in a dawn raid, police entered a family home and shot dead a half naked unarmed Aboriginal man in his bedroom saying he was pulling a weapon on them, all within one hundred and ten seconds of kicking in the front door. Not only was he completely unarmed, but the police broke many laws in the illegal execution of their warrant because they were after a cop killer (who was not present) and thought they could get away with it as the inquest later showed. Happened a while back now, but I will never forget that innocent man's name as long as I live. Being Aboriginal in many parts of my country equates with being guilty. If he didn't commit that crime he was probably guilty of another right? "boongs. you just can;t trust them". so i am very wary of "profiling".

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